Social media advertising is currently the third on the list of the total global ad spend rank, just after TV and paid search. With 2.5 billion active users on Facebook, 1 billion on Instagram and 330 million on Twitter worldwide, it’s a place where consumers are for a variety of reasons.
In this article I’ll break down what exactly goes into a paid social campaign and share our recipe for social media advertising success that we use with our clients (for example, a London-based tech startup kwiff we worked with gained 350k+ of new depositing customers over 2,5 years).
Point 1: Strategy
The first ingredient that goes into a paid social campaign is your strategy.
You are going to want to focus on defining your goals, your key performance indicators (KPIs) and do some competitor research.
1. GOALS
When defining the goals for your paid social campaign, try to think of the things that are going to move the needle for your business.
Then try to see how those goals can be translated into a paid social campaign.
2. KPIs
Key performance indicators are metrics that you can assign to those goals.
One of the reasons digital marketing is so powerful is because you can measure things. Make sure you take advantage of that by defining your KPIs.
Example:
You know you need to acquire 100 new paying customers every month for the next three months to hit your financial and growth goals.
That means that the campaigns main goal (in this case) is to bring in new customers.
You can then assign your KPI as number of new customers.
Now you know your goal & KPI, you will be able to tell if your campaign is successful or not.
3. Competitor Research
Competitor research is something that you should always include into your digital activities.
Understanding what is working and what’s not working for your closest competitors is an incredibly powerful advantage and can save large sums of capital and advertising spend.
Try to checkout some social listening tools if it’s something you are looking into deeper, such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buzzsumo...there’s a massive list.
Point 2: Funnel Map
There’s many names, variations and applications of a “funnel map” such as “customer journey”, but we use the term funnel map when we are talking about paid social campaigns.
A good funnel map is a clear visual overview of your campaign.
It contains top level details such as avert audiences, advert objectives, type of creative content.
It should give a quick snapshot into all the steps involved that allow whoever is viewing it to understand how one section of your campaign fits into the rest.
Point 3: Audiences
You need to have well defined audiences and ensure that they do not overlap.
Knowing your target audience and buyer personas thoroughly will help you build audiences for your paid social campaigns that are more likely to buy, consume and advocate your product.
In your main business strategy you should have defined your main target audience & some buyer personas.
If you don’t have access to this information, try to think about who it is that benefits the most from using your product and is likely to buy, use and advocate your product.
Put some research into how these personas and audiences spend time in the digital space. Here is a small example of some of the questions you should be asking:
- Which pages/profiles do they follow?
- What are their interests?
- What are their demographics?
- Have they interacted with your brand before in the digital space?
The more you can answer the better.
Knowing your target audience and buyer personas thoroughly will help you build audiences for your paid social campaigns that are more likely to buy, consume and advocate your product.
Point 4: Creative Content
Creative content is an incredibly important ingredient.
There are three main things to focus on when creating content for paid social campaigns:
Thumb Stopping.
Engaging.
Goal Focused.
There are three main things to focus on when creating content for paid social campaigns:
Thumb Stopping.
Engaging.
Goal Focused.
We have all experienced the incredible & overwhelming amount of noise on social media.
It’s impossible to scroll through your feed without being bombarded by multiple adverts.
It’s only natural that as humans, we begin to tune out most of the noise.
That’s why we focus on these three things to help us cut through that noise and maintain effective marketing communication.
